I read this as a teen, and I have thought of it so many times through the years, about a woman at the mercy of cruel circumstances, trying to retain her dignity and strength through a creative act. She is always last after caring for others. I finally searched it out and added it here, to remind me to look for a copy to reread. I will update my review then. For now, I'm giving it a 5 star rating, because it has stuck with me all these years, while some "classics" fade in my memory. ( )

The Dollmaker is the story of Gertie Nevels, a Kentucky woman who is uprooted from the home that she loves and forced to live in Detroit during the Second World War. It is a tragedy that springs from the loss of agrarian life to industrial labor, the misunderstands and lack of communications between spouses, and the burying of the artistic spirit and individuality beneath the struggle to simply exist.

There are dozens of ideas in this book that could be discussed and debated at length, but what kept coming to the fore for me was the way one life, one person, can be smothered in the crowd of humanity, and how much humanity itself suffers for this every time it happens. Life in Detroit is a nightmare for Gertie, but not only for Gertie; the alley she lives in is peopled with lives being beaten down and wasted. The factions that divide these people are much less obvious to the reader than the squalid ties that bind them. The contrast between the deprivations of the farm life that begins the novel and the deprivations of the life Gertie finds in Detroit are stark, and while Kentucky is not paradise, it would appear to be when weighed against Detroit.

There is also the religious element that runs through the book: “Religious” in the broadest sense of the word. For Gertie is searching for God, for Christ, and even for Judas. She looks to understand her fate and whether her choices are truly her own or ordained by some higher power. Indeed, there are times when I wondered where God is in the lives of so many helpless and vulnerable people. As is usually the case, the people who most profess to speak in His name are the least like Him.

My heart was broken so many times during the reading of this novel that it felt sometimes as if there were an iron band squeezing it. It is in excess of 600 pages and I strongly feel that not a word is wasted. Right into the Favorites folder with this one, with my only complaint being that the print in the version I was reading was insufferably small for these old eyes. I suppose I will need to be on the lookout for a copy with larger print, since I can easily see the need to read it again someday.


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This novel was grim and depressing, but also hauntingly lovely. It is a close look into the lives of those who moved to Detroit during WWII to be part of the war effort, and how it affected them after the war was over and the jobs went away. A heavy read, but one that will likely stay with the reader years after it has been read. ( )

I read this book years ago on the advice of a friend from Eastern Kentucky. I still think about it...an amazing American story rich with the trials of strong people living difficult lives with great dignity. ( )

came in the mail yesterday. it is really a good book to read. a must read for everyone ( )